#sally kornbluth

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Alec Schemmel

Last fall, Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth tapped a group of Jewish faculty members to advise the school on a new initiative meant to combat campus anti-Semitism. The participants were "hopeful," they said in an email to fellow MIT staff, that the move would help them "more effectively influence the decision making to reduce the tensions on campus."

Shortly thereafter, in January, an announcement from MIT chancellor Melissa Nobles dashed those hopes.

The school's "Standing Together Against Hate" (STAH) initiative, Nobles said, would include four panels: one on anti-Semitism, one on "campus freedom of expression," one on Islamophobia, and one on "anti-Palestinian racism." Omitted from the speaker series was any talk on racism or hatred targeting Israelis and Zionists.

MIT's hand-picked speakers also prompted concern. Islamophobia panelist Dalia Mogahed in the wake of Oct. 7 endorsed Hamas terrorism as an act of lawful "resistance" and suggested that Israelis are "savages" who "kill babies" and "bomb hospitals." Free speech panelist Erwin Chemerinsky, meanwhile, serves as the dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, which was sued in November over "unchecked" campus anti-Semitism.

For the Jewish faculty members, Nobles's announcement came as a surprise—not because MIT declined to take their advice on panel topics and speakers, but because the school failed to seek out their advice altogether. The members responded by disbanding their advisory group.

"As our group was originally conceived in the framework of STAH, we want to emphasize that we had no input to the published program and/or reviewed it before its announcement," the advisory group members said in their February email. "As a result, we recently informed President Kornbluth that we would disband the advisory group."

Kornbluth has since vowed to reassess MIT's policies on "harassment, bullying, intimidation and discrimination." She also launched the "Standing Together Against Hate" initiative in November, which MIT leaders said would help "bring our community together" by addressing anti-Semitism and other "tension between some groups and individuals."

Instead, the initiative created tension between Kornbluth and Jewish faculty members, calling into question the embattled president's pledge to combat anti-Semitism. For the MIT Israel Alliance, a campus group formed in the wake of Oct. 7 to protect Jewish students, Kornbluth's freezing out of the advisory committee marks a "missed opportunity … to tackle the very real and disturbing heightened antisemitism on campus."

[eretzyisrael]

by Jessica Costescu

"The Jewish and Israeli community at MIT … has undergone some of the worst violence, hatred, and injustice in the past 7 months," Khan and Moore wrote in a Monday letter to Kornbluth, "and we have seen the MIT Administration stand idly by as classmates, lab partners, and even our professors praised the murder of our friends and family, called for violence against Jews, and most recently chanted 'Death to Zionists' on MIT campus."

"You claim that if we are willing to wait just one more week, on top of the seven months we have already waited for you to act, you will finally support the Jewish community and take action against those calling for our deaths and the deaths of our loved ones," the students continued. "We don't believe you. … We will hold our celebration of Jewish self-determination, as planned."

Kornbluth's failed attempt to clear the encampment—and shifting deadline to do so—comes as the president faces congressional scrutiny into her handling of campus anti-Semitism.

The House Education Committee formalized an investigation into MIT in March, roughly three months after Kornbluth appeared before the committee alongside then-Harvard University president Claudine Gay and then-University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill. The hearing was a disaster, and both Magill and Gay resigned in its wake.

Now, the committee, led by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), is in the process of obtaining internal documents regarding Kornbluth's response to campus anti-Semitism. In a March letter sent to Kornbluth, Foxx expressed "grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of MIT's response to antisemitism on its campus," citing "hypocrisy and selective enforcement of Institute rules."

MIT did not respond to a request for comment.

In her Monday directive to disband the encampment, Kornbluth said student protesters who opted to leave voluntarily would avoid suspension. Those who stayed in the encampment would face immediate suspension, she said.

Hours later, after protesters breached the campus lawn and retook the encampment, Kornbluth issued a Monday evening "update." She said most students "had left the enclosed tent area" on Monday afternoon before "a large number of outside demonstrators arrived" and caused a "surge." None of those demonstrators were arrested, Kornbluth said.

"As we write, about 150 students and others are standing in a circle around the tents and others are nearby chanting," she said. "While no arrests have been made on campus, police officers from MIT, Cambridge and the state remain on the scene to preserve public safety."

"We have much work still to do to resolve this situation, and will continue to communicate as needed," Kornbluth said.

Kornbluth has a history of walking back promises to discipline anti-Israel protesters. In November, she threatened to expel students engaged in unsanctioned protests before opting to place those students on a "non-academic suspension," which allowed them to continue attending class. Kornbluth said she did so to protect foreign students, citing "serious concerns about collateral consequences for the students, such as visa issues."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

GIDEON TAAFFE, EMMA MAE WEBER & CHLOE SIMON at MMFA:

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned this week following an intense right-wing campaign to oust the leaders of several prominent universities following their testimony at a congressional hearing on antisemitism in December. Gay’s resignation comes amid a clearly stated strategy on the right to target higher education and root out supposedly “woke” ideology and also includes a prolonged assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. 

Several high-profile academics have been the victims of a targeted right-wing harassment campaign

Gay, alongside newly resigned University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and current MIT President Sally Kornbluth, was accused of not protecting Jewish students on campus during pro-Palestinian protests over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Magill resigned after intense backlash from conservatives and donors over her testimony. [The Associated Press, 12/12/23; The New York Times, 12/10/23]

After the early December congressional hearing, right-wing activists pivoted to continuously charging Gay with allegations of plagiarism until her resignation on January 2. Without defending Gay, President Irene Mulvey of the American Association of University Professors said that plagiarism accusations could be “weaponized” to have a chilling effect on educators, explaining: “There is a right-wing political attack on higher education right now, which feels like an existential threat to the academic freedom that has made American higher education the envy of the world.” [ABC News, 1/2/24; The Associated Press, 1/3/24]

The ouster of Claudine Gay from Harvard was driven by right-wing media's assault on higher education and DEI, led by Christopher Rufo.

See Also:

Vox: The culture war came for Claudine Gay — and isn’t done yet

[rivage-seulm]

GOP Attacks on Higher Learning: What’s Education for Anyway? And How about Religion?

Readings for the Third Sunday of Advent:Isaiah 61: 1-2A, 10-11; Luke 1: 46-48, 49-50, 53-54; 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28. Last week, Americans were treated to a high-level display of hypocrisy, double standards, and pure ignorance regarding higher learning. The spectacle occurred during a House Education Committee hearing about on-campus demonstrations supporting Palestinians in…

[plitnick]

The bipartisan attack on Palestine solidarity is higher than ever

The effort to criminalize any support for #Palestinian rights in the US–indeed to criminalize #Palestinians–moved forward last week, in congressional hearings led by an antisemite and attacks on one of the US’ leading Muslim figures. Read more at Mondoweiss.  

[psychologeek]

"Is murder okay?"

Psychologeek, digital art. 2023.

Drawing, because I don't have words.

[beardedmrbean]

PHILADELPHIA – In the City of Brotherly Love, Gemma Levy sometimes doesn’t feel safe.

Levy decided to attend the University of Pennsylvania partly because of its long history of tolerance toward Jewish students like her. But with recent events – pro-Palestinian protests, antisemitic chants, university President Liz Magill’s perplexing remarks about genocide and her subsequent resignation – the campus hasn’t seemed all that tolerant.

“I’ve felt super unsafe at times,” Levy, a freshman cognitive science major from Brooklyn, said while hurrying to class along the tree-lined Locust Walk in the oldest part of the campus. “It’s a weird experience to feel that way.”

It’s an unsettling experience for the city, too.

Philadelphia, known as the birthplace of the United States, is where the Founding Fathers met and debated the future of the new country. Founded on the principles of religious freedom, it’s home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the country.

The University of Pennsylvania, founded primarily by Benjamin Franklin and now regarded as one of the nation’s premier schools of higher learning, kept its doors open to Jewish students when Harvard and other Ivy League colleges implemented quotas and other measures to limit their enrollment or keep them out altogether.

Today, though, Philadelphia and the university are at the epicenter of the clash over free speech and antisemitism, the Israel-Hamas war and the right to feel safe and secure.

How did that happen? In Philadelphia of all places?

“We’re a microcosm of society,” said Michael Balaban, president and chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

Antisemitism is a virus that mutates over time and is easily spread through the prevalence of social media, Balaban said.

“We see it online in vicious ways every single second of the day,” he said.

'Vile, antisemitic messages'

Antisemitism in Philadelphia has turned up online, on campus and in the streets.

In November, the university responded to what it described as “vile, antisemitic messages” threatening violence against the Jewish community. Antisemitic emails were sent to a number of staffers, and antisemitic language was projected onto several campus buildings. The school said it planned to increase security across the campus, including at Penn Hillel, a Jewish student organization.

A month later, an off-campus protest by pro-Palestinian demonstrators was widely condemned for targeting the Jewish-owned falafel restaurant Goldie. Video posted on social media showed a large crowd gathered outside the restaurant, chanting: “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the restaurant was singled out because its owner, Philadelphia-based Israeli chef Michael Solomonov, had raised over $100,000 for an Israeli nonprofit that provided emergency relief services to Israeli Defense Forces soldiers after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Regardless, the White House, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and others condemned the protesters’ actions, calling them antisemitic and reminiscent of a dark time in history.

Then came Magill’s downfall.

Magill and the presidents of two other elite universities – Claudine Gay of Harvard and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – already had been under scrutiny over how their institutions had responded to a rise in antisemitism on their campuses when they agreed to testify last week before a GOP-led House congressional panel.

Lawmakers lobbed a series of tough questions at the three college leaders, who hedged when Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., asked whether calls for the genocide of Jews violated their schools’ code of conduct against bullying and harassment.

Appearing to sense a trap, Magill and the other two presidents gave carefully worded responses that sounded scripted and lawyerly but failed to directly answer the question. In one exchange, Magill called those decisions “context-dependent” but conceded that calls for genocide could be considered harassment “if the speech turns into conduct.”

The backlash was fast and brutal. To some, the presidents’ responses raised questions about whether the schools would adequately protect Jewish students. The White House condemned their answers, donors threatened to withhold millions of dollars, and the House committee announced an investigation into the universities' policies and disciplinary procedures.

Magill tried to walk back her comments, but the damage was done. She resigned last Saturday but will remain at the university as a tenured law professor. Scott Bok, chairman of the university’s board of trustees, also stepped down.

Julie Platt, the trustees’ interim chair, declined requests for an interview but said in a statement after Magill’s resignation that a leadership change at the university was “necessary and appropriate.”

While Penn has made strides in addressing the rise of antisemitism on campus, “we have not made all of the progress that we should have and intend to accomplish,” she said.

Magill, who had been president for just a little over a year, was already on shaky ground even before her testimony. She had come under fire in September over a Palestinian Writers’ Festival that was held at the university and drew criticism for including speakers who have been accused of antisemitism. Magill and others had raised concerns about the program but did not stop it, citing support for “the free exchange of ideas” – even those that are controversial and “incompatible with our institutional values.”

Last week, a pair of Jewish students sued the university, claiming it has become a lab for "virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."

Author Jerome Karabel, who has written about the history of exclusion at Ivy League schools, said it is ironic that Penn is facing charges that it hasn’t done enough to quell antisemitism on campus. At some point, all of the other Ivy League schools tried to limit Jewish enrollment. Penn never had any such limitations, he said.

“You could argue that Penn, historically, has been the friendliest of the Ivy League schools for Jewish students,” Karabel said.

'An inclusive and welcoming community for all students'

On campus, there were few outward signs of turmoil this week. With final exams under way, students hurried to class on a cold, blustery late-fall morning. Stickers and fliers supporting the Palestinian people and urging a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war were posted on billboards and along walkways and pedestrian bridges.

At Houston Hall, which the university says is the oldest student union in the country, a small group of students has been staging a sit-in since mid-November to show support for the Palestinians. Early one afternoon this week, protesters nestled in big chairs and slept under sheets on cushions. Others painted posters and fliers listing their demands: A cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. The protection of freedom of speech on campus. “Critical thought” on the subject of Palestine. A place for Palestinian studies.

“Nobody here is calling for the genocide of Jews,” insisted Clancy Murray, who is working on a Ph.D. in political science.

Murray said several Jewish students have joined the sit-in but acknowledged that some feel unsafe in the current environment. Some Palestinian students on campus aren’t comfortable being visible either, Murray said, because of threats and the possibility of doxing, harassment and even violence and hate crimes.

As for Magill’s departure, Murray said it’s concerning “that she was driven out” and that “there are a handful of donors who are empowered to dictate what is and what is not acceptable speech on campus.”

David Donovan, who was on his way to his daughter’s graduation from Penn’s nursing school, said emotions surrounding the Israel-Hamas war are charging tensions on campus like never before.

“We are more sensitive to the feelings of other people, and that’s a net positive, I believe,” said Donovan, a history teacher from Morristown, N.J.

When it comes to deciding what constitutes free speech vs. hate speech, Donovan said, “we still have to be very apprehensive and think very carefully that our positions are backed by reason.”

“We need to err on the side of free speech,” Donovan added, acknowledging, “That’s an easy thing for me to believe as a straight, white man.”

The community at large is also grappling with issues of free speech. Some Jewish families are rethinking outward expressions of Judaism, Balaban said.

At his home in the Wynnewood suburb, Balaban flies both the Israeli and American flags in the front of his house and displays a menorah in the window. Before, “that would never have been a question in my mind to do it or not to do it,” he said. But with everything that has happened, “in my household, the question was, ‘Are we OK doing this?’” he said.

“Of course, the answer is, yes, we're going to,” Balaban said. “But did we worry that someone may do something? The answer is yes. I think we will always display an Israeli flag with pride. We will always display symbols of our Judaism. But there was a pause of what does that mean.”

'We will come through this difficult moment'

So what's next? How do the community and the university heal after the trauma of the past few months?

"This is a strong community built on a sturdy foundation.  We will come through this difficult moment," the university promised in an email message to students this week.

The university pledged to redouble its commitment to ensuring that Penn is a place where “intellectual growth is cultivated” and students are “supported as a person.”

“Initiatives recently launched to address bigotry and hatred on our campus will continue, and this will be an inclusive and welcoming community for all students,” the message said.

Levy urged school administrators to be more proactive and less reactive.

“I hope,” she said, “instead of being on the defensive and apologizing after things happen, they’ll take steps to actually stop these incidents in the first place.”

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

Maresuke Nogi was always his own toughest critic. Emperor Meiji trusted him and appointed him to high military posts in Japan: general in the imperial army, governor-general of Taiwan. But we all make mistakes, and Nogi’s lapses gnawed at him. Twice he requested the emperor’s leave to commit ritual suicide. Each time, the emperor refused. In Nogi’s home, now a quiet shrine in a Tokyo meadow, you can see pictures of Nogi reading the newspaper on September 13, 1912, the morning of his boss’s funeral. No one was left to stop him. Near the photo you can see the sword he used later that day to disembowel himself.

I raise the example of General Nogi to encourage present-day leaders (military, political, educational) to take a much more modest step. They should offer to resign—often, and both in times of trouble and in times of calm. This weekend, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, did the honorable thing, and the chair of Penn’s board, Scott Bok, followed his kōhai’s example shortly after. Magill resigned because she, along with Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth, performed abysmally under questioning in Congress. Their inquisitor, upstate New York’s Elise Stefanik, a Republican, asked them whether chanting genocidal slogans violated their universities’ policies. It depends on the context, they all said, on the advice of counsel and the worst PR teams money can buy. Within days, Magill and Gay conceded that their answers had not been ideal. Gay is facing calls for her resignation, too.

Resign. Resign. Everyone: resign. Resignation has come to mean failure, something one does when cornered, caught dead to rights, incapable of continuing for even another day. It should be an act of honor—a high point in a career of service. It isn’t shameful. It is noble. It is the first and sometimes only step in the expiation of shame, and (ironically) the ultimate sign of one’s fitness for office.

No one demonstrates the value of these traits better than those who lack them entirely. I thought of Nogi’s katana, flashing from its scabbard, last week when the House voted to expel George Santos, Stefanik’s colleague in New York’s Republican delegation. The House almost never kicks anyone out, mainly because those facing expulsion have in the past tended to resign rather than weather the indignity of an expulsion vote. Santos is taking his ouster well and posting prolifically on TikTok. A psychologically normal person would have resigned the instant his tower of lies showed signs of wobbling. To let it crash down, then dance around the rubble of that tower until the orderlies arrive and pull you away, is truly mad behavior, and a demonstration of unfitness for the job, or indeed any job other than TikTok star.

I cannot prove this, but I believe the tendency to stick it out rather than resign started roughly when Representative Anthony Weiner (New York again, this time a Democrat) called a press conference to discuss whether he had, in fact, tweeted a picture of his penis, tumescent in his underwear. He could have just quit, and eventually he did (but lived to humiliate himself another day). But that pause to hold a press conference broke the seal on something dangerous, the idea that one can talk one’s way through a mortification. To take the podium and subject oneself to hostile questioning under those circumstances bespoke a delusionary chutzpah.

It soon became clear that anyone socially defective enough to persist through a scandal has a good chance of surviving it. By the time then-candidate Donald Trump (Republican, guess where) appeared on the Access Hollywood tape, describing his hobby of sexually assaulting women, it ceased to be obvious that at some point one should tap out and go home. If you have no shame, and you refuse to go, there might not be anyone out there who can make you. Mechanisms exist, as the Santos case shows. But the mechanisms were devised to govern people from another time, sensitive to ridicule and guffaws.

One should be ready for criticism, both earned and unearned. But resignation—more precisely, the offer of resignation—is an expression of confidence, both in oneself and in one’s employers or constituents. A board can reject a resignation. Voters can turn out in the streets to beg you to reconsider, or can turn out at the ballot to vote you back in. In fact, the more defensible one’s position, the greater esteem we should show for the one who offers to leave it. Call this the Nogi rule.

Harvard’s Claudine Gay evidently believed that she’d erred, because she reverted immediately to damage-control mode after leaving Washington. The next day, she told the Crimson that her testimony did not represent “my truth”—that is, that she disapproves of genocidal anti-Semitism. (This is an extreme example of the political axiom “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”) Her original answer before Congress lacked any visceral disapproval of anti-Semitism, certainly none to match Harvard’s recent record of condemning speech deemed offensive to historically disadvantaged groups. Her affect was robotic, neutral. She showed no signs of concern at all.

But her neutrality was born of an honorable principle, well worth defending. It reflected the values of free expression in a modern interpretation of the First Amendment, under which anyone can say just about any foolish thing, as long as saying it isn’t about to cause someone else to break the law. If the “context” of a genocidal chant is a nonviolent rally, the university shouldn’t stop anyone from chanting. (It should examine its soul. But that is another matter.) If the context is a crowd of protesters with bricks in hand, running at a group of Jews, the university should expel or fire every demonstrator there, whether armed with a brick or a bullhorn. All three presidents should have said this, then added a note of contrition over their universities’ failure to uphold these principles of free expression in the past.

But I’ll say it again: Gay should resign. To offer her neck to Harvard’s Board of Overseers would show her confidence that its members, like Emperor Meiji, would see past her error and ask her to endure in her position. It would also demonstrate her willingness to own that error, to acknowledge it publicly and unselfishly. Maybe the board would accept her resignation, and maybe it would not. Either of these fates is better than the one she is courting. At the moment she is trying to wriggle out of her error, and clinging to her job as if her dignity depended on keeping it. Better to teach by example that the reverse is often true, that dignity depends on leaving a job—and that staying suggests that one has nothing else, once it is gone.

The greatest legacy a resignation leaves is the creation of a culture of resignation. One institution that, up until now, has had such a culture is the Israeli defense establishment. A few weeks ago, I spoke with a former Mossad official who assured me that the entire leadership of the Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces would, as soon as the Gaza war reached a satisfactory pause, resign from their positions. They would do so, he said, because resignation was the only honorable response to their failure to foresee and prevent Hamas’s attack on October 7. Their predecessors did so in 2006, after the very messy war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and after several other episodes of modest failure in Israeli history. That they might stick around, slinking back to their offices as if hoping everyone forgot about their mistakes, would be inconceivable. In this context, one understands better the popular rage against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in whom the spirit of General Nogi is extinct: To this day, he is making the case to the Israeli right for his remaining their leader indefinitely.

One can’t get far in politics without a dogged willingness to destroy one’s critics and step on their corpses to reach the next height. But this is a minimal qualification for success, and everyone who attains high office, having climbed up from decades in the Senate or in departmental meetings, has it to an unusual degree. To persist is just to do what comes naturally for these people. To give up at the right moment—that is a quality against type, and a virtue possessed by the greatest of leaders. It is nevertheless available even to those who have hitherto shown no signs of greatness at all. Let it be said of them what is said in Macbeth of the Thane of Cawdor: that nothing became them in public service like the leaving it.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

House Republicans launch multiple investigations into college protests

Four GOP committee chairs are probing pro-Palestinian campus activism.

+

New GOP move: discredit and defund the nation's major research universities and move funds to private, religious schools like Liberty University and Hillsdale, the new GOP models for higher education.

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 2, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 03, 2024

More than 2,000 people have been arrested at protests on college and university campuses around the country opposing Israel’s military strikes on Gaza since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, and the subsequent humanitarian crisis there. It is unclear how many of the protesters are students, as many of those arrested have not been affiliated with the universities, or how many of the arrests will result in charges—sometimes arrests at protests are designed simply to clear an area.

The roots of today’s protests lie in an investigation by the Republican-dominated House Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by Virginia Foxx (R-NC). The committee announced the investigation on December 7, two days after its members spent more than five hours grilling then-president of Harvard University Claudine Gay, then-president of University of Pennsylvania Liz Magill, and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sally Kornbluth on how their universities were handling student protests against Israel over its military response to Hamas’s attack of October 7.

Led by Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Republicans on the committee insisted that the universities were not protecting Jewish students. The university presidents responded that they deplored antisemitism, that students had the right to free speech, and that they took action against those who violated policies against bullying, harassment, or intimidation. But in their defense of free speech, they admitted both that hate speech against Jews and others is sometimes protected and that they had sometimes made bad calls.  

The Republicans’ interest in protecting Jewish students on campus overlapped with their opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that they associate with Democrats. Burgess Owens (R-UT) said DEI initiatives protect Black students at the expense of others. “I just remember a couple of years ago when we were dealing with Black Lives Matter,” he said. “Try to talk about Blue Lives Matter, Jew Lives Matter, Arab Lives Matter—they call it racist. It’s time for us to focus on what’s happening on your campuses.”

Stefanik called the testimony “pathetic” and, along with 74 other members of Congress, demanded that Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, resign. On January 2, following accusations she had plagiarized scholarly work, she did. Her resignation followed that of Liz Magill. “TWO DOWN,” Stefanik wrote on social media. 

Two days after the university presidents’ testimony, Stefanik announced that the House Education and Workforce Committee would be investigating universities. “We will use our full Congressional authority to hold these schools accountable for their failure on the global stage,” she said.

On February 12 the committee informed Columbia it was next up. Columbia University president Nemat "Minouche" Shafik had been unable to testify with the other presidents in December and gave her testimony to the committee on April 17, along with co-chairs of the Board of Trustees Claire Shipman and David Greenwald and former dean David Schizer over the university's response to antisemitism. 

In an April 16 essay in the Wall Street Journal, Shafik wrote that “antisemitism and calls for genocide have no place at a university…but that leaves plenty of room for robust disagreement and debate.” She said she prioritizes “the safety and security of our community” and that while the attack of October 7 had a "deep personal impact" on the Jewish and Israeli communities, there was also a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza, and the war was "part of a larger story of Palestinian displacement." She explained that Columbia had defined a space for protests to enable those they upset to avoid them. 

Opening the hearing, committee chair Foxx said: “Since October 7, this Committee and the nation have watched in horror as so many of our college campuses, particularly the most expensive, so-called elite schools, have erupted into hotbeds of antisemitism and hate.” Stefanik called out tenured professor Joseph Massad of the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department, who called the October 7 attack a “stunning victory.” 

Shafik responded by condemning the professor’s statements. “Trying to reconcile the free speech rights of those who want to protest and the rights of Jewish students to be in an environment free of harassment or discrimination has been the central challenge on our campus, and many others, in recent months…. We do not, and will not, tolerate antisemitic threats, images, and other violations…. We have enforced, and we will continue to enforce, our policies against such actions,” she said. 

Ilhan Omar (D-MN) questioned Shafik about discrimination against pro-Palestinian protesters. She noted that Israel-born assistant professor Shai Davidai was accused of harassing pro-Palestinian students; Shafik said they have had more than 50 complaints about him and he is under investigation. 

On April 17, the same day the Columbia officials testified, pro-Palestinian protesters organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (a self-described “coalition of student organizations that see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation”), Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace set up a camp at the university. It garnered little attention; the April 18 New York Times did not mention it. According to Sharif, the school warned protesters they would be suspended if the encampment was not removed. They stayed. On April 18, according to New York mayor Eric Adams, Columbia officials called in New York City police to disband the protest. They arrested more than 100 people, including Representative Omar’s daughter, a Columbia student. The arrests were peaceful.  

University faculty and community members were shocked by the resort to law enforcement at a place known both for learning and debate and for its history. In April 1968, in the midst of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, a week of protests after students learned of Columbia’s support for weapons research and its plan to construct a seemingly segregated gym in a nearby community had led New York City police to crush the demonstrations with violence.  

In the days after the current arrests, nearly a dozen student and faculty groups released statements or open letters objecting to the police presence on campus and supporting students’ rights to free speech and peaceful protest. The protest encampment sprang back up. 

At the same time, Jewish leaders warned that antisemitism was increasing. Rabbi Elie Buechler, of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel and Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, urged Jewish students to return home for Passover, which began April 22, and to stay there for their own safety.

In the next weeks, protests sprang up around the country, with protesters generally demanding that university administrators divest from investments in Israel or in companies that sell weapons, technology, or construction equipment to Israel, and cut ties to Israeli universities. They have tended to turn their anger against President Joe Biden and his administration, whom they blame for what they call a genocide in Gaza. Universities have responded in a variety of ways, from discussion to armed law enforcement officers.

Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have insisted that Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas and have continued to provide Israel with military defenses, whose importance in stopping the war from spreading showed on April 14, when those defenses shot down virtually all of the weapons Iran launched at Israel. They are working hard for a ceasefire, with Blinken currently in the Middle East and a proposal on the table that Israel has accepted but Hamas has not. 

The administration has also stood against the initial policy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration to cordon off Gaza without food, water, or electricity, and has pressured Israel into permitting humanitarian aid into Gaza. It has also firmly opposed Israeli plans to attack Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have taken shelter, and has stood firmly in favor of a Palestinian state, which the protesters have not indicated they endorse.

On April 24, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) visited Columbia, where he called for Shafik  to resign. On Monday, April 29, he and Republican leadership met to discuss how they might reenergize the party and gain traction now that their impeachment effort against Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has flopped, the conference is bitterly split, their control of the House of Representatives has resulted in one of the least productive congresses in American history, and their presumptive presidential nominee is being tried for election interference that involved paying off women with whom he had extramarital sex. They settled on campus antisemitism—although Trump’s open embrace of white nationalists makes this problematic—and the campus protests as a sign that Democrats are the party of disorder.

On that same day, 21 House Democrats wrote a letter to Columbia’s trustees demanding they “act decisively, disband the encampment, and ensure the safety and security of all of its students.” That night, protesters took control of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, where they broke windows and vandalized furniture. About twenty hours later, police in riot gear arrested them. Arrests across the country climbed.

Yesterday, Representative Foxx announced that her committee’s antisemitism investigation will expand into a Congress-wide crackdown on colleges. In a press conference, she said she had a clear message for “mealy-mouthed, spineless college leaders. Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of duty to your Jewish students. American universities are officially put on notice that we have come to take our universities back.” 

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted that right-wing politicians jumped on the Kent State shootings of May 1970 to defund colleges and universities, while a “law and order” backlash helped to give Republican president Richard M. Nixon a landslide reelection in 1972. 

Today, President Biden addressed the protests, saying they “test two fundamental American principles. The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. The second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld.” 

Biden called for lawful, peaceful protests and warned: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations—none of this is a peaceful protest…. Dissent is essential to democracy,” he said, “But dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education…. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”

When asked, he told reporters he did not think the National Guard should be involved in suppressing the protests. 

Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times reported today that Russia, China, and Iran are amplifying the protests “to score geopolitical points abroad and stoke tensions within the United States,” as well as to “undermine President Biden’s reelection prospects.” 

It is unclear if the protests will continue during the summer, when fewer students will be on campus.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre

Jewish and Israeli students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have warned in a new letter to university president Sally Kornbluth that radical anti-Zionism and intimidation of Jewish students on campus has become intolerable and reminiscent of Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust.

The letter, shared on X/Twitter by MIT professor Retsef Levi, recounted an incident from Thursday in which students from the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA), a campus anti-Israel group, “physically prevented” them from attending class by forming a “blockade” of bodies in Lobby 7, a space inside the main entrance of the university. Non-students were invited to attend CAA’s demonstration, and together the entire group spent hours chanting “Intifada” — a term used to describe violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel — and declaring solidarity with Hamas.

“Instead of dispersing the mob or de-escalating the situation by rerouting all students from Lobby 7, Jewish students specifically were warned not to enter MIT’s front entrance due to a risk to their physical safety,” wrote the MIT Israel Alliance. “The onus to protect Jewish students should not be on the students themselves.”

Even after being threatened with suspension should they not disperse, the letter continued, CAA remained in Lobby 7, inviting more non-student protesters, which caused the university to issue through its emergency notification system a directive to “avoid” the area. The students added that a high-level official of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning vowed, in defiance of official orders, to protect any CAA students who continued the demonstration.

The MIT Israel Alliance said that by the end of the day, Jewish students were told to enter the university through its back entrance and avoid the campus’ Hillel building.

“On the 9th of November, on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, which marked the beginning of the Holocaust, Jews at MIT were told to enter campus from back entrances and not to stay in Hillel for fear of their physical safety,” the group concluded. “We are seeing history repeating itself and Jews on MIT’s campus are afraid.”

When asked for comment, an MIT spokesperson told The Algemeiner that the school is closed in observance of Veterans Day, but MIT President Sally Kornbluth addressed the incident late Thursday after the MIT Israel Alliance issued its letter. Her statement did not mention antisemitism.

“I am deliberately not specifying the viewpoints, as the issue at hand is not the substance of the views but where and how they were expressed,” Kornbluth said, noting that Jewish and pro-Israel counter-protesters were also present in Lobby 7 and that all students were recently reminded of guidelines forbidding holding protests in the building. “Today’s protest — which became disruptive, loud, and sustained through the morning hours — was organized and conducted in defiance of those MIT guidelines and polices. Some students from both the protest and counterprotest may have violated other MIT policies, as well.”

Kornbluth added that protesters who remained after being told to leave will receive a non-academic suspension.

[eretzyisrael]

by Amy Rosenthal

Jewish faculty learned in early 2022 that additional problematic publications were planned, such as Invited to Witness Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine and a Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Palestine, both of which ignore Jewish presence and relationship to Israel. The faculty members requested a meeting with the DUP director, to include Kornbluth. She did not show.

Many believed over the years that since Kornbluth is Jewish, she would support our community — but they were wrong.

In 2019, Duke and the University of North Carolina hosted a conference on Gaza that was rife with antisemitism. A civil rights complaint was filed, requiring Duke to address its antisemitism problem.

Kornbluth was silent.

Also in 2019, Duke’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter held its Israeli Apartheid Week. Speakers included local students who visited leaders of the terrorist group. the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Speakers called Israel a “white supremacist nation” and invited students to sign up for more Eyewitness Palestine trips.

Kornbluth was silent.

In November 2021, approval of a new Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter was vetoed by the Duke Student Government (DSG), when an SSI member dared to push back on the false “settler colonial” narrative about Israel. SSI was eventually reinstated, but only after the DSG was called out for their discriminatory behavior. Price and Kornbluth ignored the plight of Jewish students and Duke’s role in enabling antisemitism, saying that DSG’s actions are “independent of, and not determined by or sanctioned by the University.”

[unfortunatetheorist]

The R - Part 1:

What is the connection between Mr Remora and Duchess R [of Winnipeg]?

One of the many mysteries that Lemony Snicket has left behind for readers (and viewers, to a certain extent) is 'What does the R stand for, in "Duchess R" ?' I am going to attempt to answer this question using any resources available, under the title 'The R'. This will be over a series of unfortunate posts, in this format.

Firstly, we must look for any and all clues that can give us even the slightest hint as to what R might stand for.

For this, I have gone through every character in ASOUE and this is produced: (after the cut, but feel free to skip ahead)

Lemony Snicket

Violet Baudelaire 

Klaus Baudelaire 

Sunny Baudelaire 

Count Olaf

Bald Man with the Long Nose 

Mrs. Bass 

Beatrice Baudelaire 

Beatrice Baudelaire II 

Bertrand Baudelaire 

Bruce 

Colette  

Fernald 

Hal 

Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender 

Hugo 

Incredibly Deadly Viper 

Geraldine Julienne 

Kevin 

Kind Editor 

Man with a Beard but No Hair

Vice Principal Nero

Phil 

Arthur Poe  

Duncan Quagmire 

Isadora Quagmire  

Quigley Quagmire  

Mr. Remora 

Carmelita Spats 

Kit Snicket 

Esmé Squalor 

Jerome Squalor 

Justice Strauss 

White-Faced Women 

Woman with Hair but No Beard

Albert Poe 

Edgar Poe 

Polly Poe 

Wart-Faced Man

Alaskan Cow Lizard 

Androgynous Cobra  

Madame diLustro  

Dissonant Toad  

Green Gimlet Toad 

Inky Newt 

Irascible Python 

O. Lucafont 

Mamba du Mal 

Monty Montgomery 

Monty Montgomery's Sister

Gustav Sebald 

Stephano 

Virginian Wolfsnake

Ike Anwhistle

Josephine Anwhistle

Bertrand Baudelaire's Cousin

Gina-Sue

 Larry Your-Waiter 

Captain Sham

Charles

 Foreman Firstein

 Flacutono

Georgina Orwell

 Shirley 

Sir

Elwyn 

Coach Genghis 

Ms. Tench

Ben 

Gunther

Chief of Police

Council of Elders 

Detective Dupin 

Hector

 Mr. Lesko 

Officer Luciana 

Mrs. Morrow 

Verhoogen Family 

V.F.D. Crows

Babs

Bearded Man 

Laura V. Bleediotie 

Lou 

Mattathias

 Milt

 Mr. Sirin

 Volunteers Fighting Disease

Beverly and Elliot

 Olivia Caliban 

Chabo the Wolf Baby 

Man With Pimples On His Chin 

Ringmaster 

Volunteer Feline Detectives

Infant Servant

C.M. Kornbluth 

Snow Gnats 

Snow Scouts 

V.F.D. Eagles 

White-Faced Women's Sibling 

Winnipeg Scout

Gregor Anwhistle 

Fiona 

The Great Unknown 

Captain Widdershins 

Mrs. Widdershins

Count Olaf's father 

Count Olaf's mother 

Dewey Denouement 

Ernest Denouement 

Frank Denouement

Alonso 

Ariel 

Jonah Bellamy 

Sadie Bellamy 

Rabbi Bligh 

Brewster 

Byam 

Friday Caliban 

Miranda Caliban 

Calypso 

Erewhon

Ferdinand 

Finn 

Professor Fletcher 

Gonzalo 

Ishmael 

Dr. Kurtz 

Larsen 

Ms. Marlow 

Monday

Madame Nordoff 

Omeros 

Mr. Pitcairn 

Robinson 

Sherman 

Thursday 

Weyden 

Willa

Beekeeper

Building Committee 

Emily Dickinson 

Dolores  

Esmé Squalor Fan Club 

Gerta 

Daniel Handler

Haruki

 Ivan Lachrymose 

Eleanora Poe 

Lena Pukalie 

Duchess R 

R's Mother 

R's Father 

Young Rölf 

Sally Sebald

Shoemaker 

A. Snicket 

B. Snicket 

Chas. Snicket 

D. Snicket 

E. Snicket 

F. Snicket 

G 

H 

I  

Jacob Snicket  

M 

N 

O 

Mr. Spats

Mrs. Spats 

Town Fathers 

Valorous Farms Dairy 

Baron van de Wetering

Yeah. Every single one.

Now, let's rule out everyone who does not have a name beginning with R, or is unclear: (again, feel free to skip ahead)

Bald Man with the Long Nose 

Mrs. Bass 

Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender 

Incredibly Deadly Viper 

Kind Editor 

Man with a Beard but No Hair

Mr. Remora 

White-Faced Women 

Woman with Hair but No Beard

Wart-Faced Man

Madame diLustro  

Monty Montgomery's Sister

Bertrand Baudelaire's Cousin

 Foreman Firstein

Coach Genghis 

Ms. Tench

Verhoogen Family 

 Mr. Sirin

Man With Pimples On His Chin 

Infant Servant

White-Faced Women's Sibling 

Winnipeg Scout

The Great Unknown 

Captain Widdershins 

Mrs. Widdershins

Count Olaf's father 

Count Olaf's mother 

Rabbi Bligh 

Dr. Kurtz 

Ms. Marlow 

Madame Nordoff 

Mr. Pitcairn 

Robinson 

Beekeeper

Duchess R 

R's Mother 

R's Father 

Young Rölf 

Mr. Spats

Mrs. Spats 

Town Fathers 

As the title states, we'll keep some focus on Remora, but we'll eliminate all other minor characters:

Bald Man with the Long Nose 

Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender 

Incredibly Deadly Viper 

Kind Editor 

Man with a Beard but No Hair

Mr. Remora 

White-Faced Women 

Woman with Hair but No Beard

Wart-Faced Man

Madame diLustro  

Monty Montgomery's Sister

Bertrand Baudelaire's Cousin

Robinson 

Duchess R 

R's Mother 

R's Father 

Young Rölf 

According to Various Fan Deductions:

TMWABBNH & TWWHBNB are Gifford & Ghede

The White-Faced Women are Zada and Zora

Lemony's Kind Editor is Moxie Mallahan

Madame diLustro is Sunny Baudelaire

This rules out the 4 of them.

Bald Man with the Long Nose 

Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender 

Incredibly Deadly Viper 

Mr. Remora 

Wart-Faced Man

Monty Montgomery's Sister

Bertrand Baudelaire's Cousin

Robinson 

Duchess R 

R's Mother 

R's Father 

Young Rölf 

Logically speaking, why would there be a connection between Ink and Duchess R? Let's eliminate unlikely possibilities:

Mr. Remora  

Monty Montgomery's Sister

Bertrand Baudelaire's Cousin

Robinson 

Duchess R 

R's Mother 

R's Father 

Young Rölf 

Monty Montgomery's sister would be (_insert name here_) Montgomery. This, to me, rules her out too... and the same logic applies to Bertrand's cousin.

Mr. Remora  

Robinson 

(Duchess R) 

(R's Mother) 

(R's Father)

Young Rölf 

Obviously her family are related:

Mr. Remora  

Robinson - Islander

Young Rölf 

So, the above names are generated. I will, henceforth, analyse a link between each character and R, starting with Remora.

POINTS:

a. It's known that a few characters in the Snicket-verse have alliterating names, such as Quigley Quagmire, Beatrice Baudelaire.

b. It's also known that some characters have WEIRD connections to others, such as Quigley's 'relation' to Mr Poe.

THEORY: Given a. and b. to be true, Mr R _______ Remora, has some abstract connection to the Duchess.

This connection can only really be established if one goes by Netflix canon and assumes Nero's surname to be Feint, and combines this with ATWQ:

Duchess R is Remora's boss' ancestor's murderer's friend.

R's friend is Lemony, who murdered Hangfire, who is the ancestor of Nero, Remora's boss.

Part 2 Still to Come...

¬ Th3r3534rch1ngr4ph, Unfortunate Theorist/Snicketologist

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Tamkin for The UnPopulist:

Unable to attend last December’s explosive congressional hearing probing antisemitism on college campuses along with Harvard’s Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth due to prior arrangements to attend a climate conference, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik came before Congress on April 17 and was questioned for over three hours. Shafik insisted throughout the hearing that Columbia had been taking antisemitism seriously, at one point even listing the various ways the university has meaningfully addressed this issue under her watch:

[Our actions included support for students, enhanced reporting channels for incidents, hiring additional staff to investigate complaints, developing new policies on demonstrations, holding listening forums to model respectful behaviors, launching educational programs, and forming a task force of our senior leaders to propose solutions to antisemitism.]

The day after she testified before Congress, Shafik, Columbia’s first woman and first Arab president, called the police to campus to break up a student encampment set up to protest Israeli actions in Gaza. Over 100 students participating in the encampment were arrested, in addition to being suspended by the university. “The president’s decision to send riot police to pick up peaceful protesters on our campus was unprecedented, unjustified, disproportionate, divisive, and dangerous,” Christopher Brown, a professor in the history department at Columbia University, told the crowd during a faculty demonstration. “I’m here because I am so concerned with what has happened at this university, with where we are now, and with where we are going,” said Brown, who indicated that this was the first time he’d spoken into a microphone at a protest of any kind. Congress wants to dictate disciplinary and educational decisions to Columbia; this is not the job of Congress, he said. Other faculty I interviewed after the hearing felt similarly.

All of this—the testimony, the protests, the call to the police, the endurance of the protests—is national news. The students are demanding that Columbia divest (that is, that Columbia withdraw from investments that students say are profiting from Israel’s military actions) and there are chants on campus—and off campus by people who are not students—that have made some Jewish students uncomfortable. Some—notably Rabbi Elie Buechler, who directs Columbia University’s Orthodox Union-Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus—have even said it is not safe for Jews at Columbia. Shafik’s handling of the situation has managed to enrage faculty and students and those on the left who find it shocking that Shafik called police to campus while also enraging those who want the encampment gone. As of this writing, it remains, still standing even after Shafik imposed a removal deadline of 2 p.m. on Monday under threat of suspension. Faculty created a protective rim around their students. Early Tuesday morning, some students took over Hamilton Hall, a building on campus.

Some of the discourse about the campus protests, at Columbia specifically and throughout the country more generally, has made it sound as though the protests are motivated by antisemitism and seek to endanger Jewish students. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as to liken the protests to Nazi Germany. Leaving aside that it is grossly ahistorical to conflate student protests against a war carried out by the Jewish state to a historical episode in which the state carried out violence and discrimination against Jews, this narrative is simplistic and, more than that, wrong. The protests are an opportunity to remind ourselves of the function of universities; that no identity is a monolith; and why students are moved to protest in the first place.

Columbia’s Only Jurisdiction Is Its Campus

Some have conflated action outside Columbia’s gates with action inside the campus. To the students who have to hear “go back to Poland” or “the 7th of October is going to be every day for you!” outside their campus, this may well be a distinction without a difference. And the truth is that Columbia, as an urban campus, bumps up against the real world and real people (including, yes, antisemites) who are not bound by the student code of conduct and are not in community with their fellow students in the same way. This is true not only of pro-Palestine protests, but also pro-Israel protests: Some in the crowd yelled “Go back to Gaza!” from outside the gates on April 26. That’s why members of Columbia’s Policy and Planning Committee of the Faculty of the Arts and Sciences noted in a letter to the media: “It is because of this respect for all Columbians that we have been so distressed by reports that conflate on-campus protests with the actions of bad actors from outside our community.” To the extent that there are specific threats made against or harm done to Jewish students at Columbia by their fellow students, those students should be specifically disciplined. This, in fact, is what the university eventually did in the case of the student who said in a January video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and that people should “be glad, be grateful that I am not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

It is true that, while student protesters are protected by the First Amendment, universities are within their rights to regulate demonstrations on their campuses. It is also true that, as these particular demonstrations are happening on university grounds, student and faculty safety should be paramount. The university has both a higher obligation to academic freedom and a higher obligation to protect the safety of all students. There are moments, however, when it may be hard to distinguish between protests and veiled violence: for example, people within the encampment at Columbia formed a human chain to stop the movement of alleged “Zionists” to protect the privacy of the encampment. That wasn’t violence, exactly, but arguably did contain within it a threat (what happens if you try to go past the chain?). Still, balancing the two, expression and safety, should be the point of a university’s disciplinary policies—not silencing a movement or chilling speech because some disagree with or are upset by its aims, or to privilege one preferred foreign policy outcome over another. Some Jewish students, for example, may not like or even feel uncomfortable because of calls like “from the river to the sea” or calls for the elimination of the Jewish state and establishment of one binational state. However, the current policy of the Israeli government is that there will not be a Palestinian state between those two bodies of water, and that, in the West Bank, Palestinians should live under military rule while Jews live under civil rule; this, too, is surely upsetting to some students. [...]

Jewish Faculty and Students Are Not a Monolith

There is also the reality that Jews ourselves, at both an institutional and personal level, do not agree on what is and is not upsetting to Jews, as we do not agree on what is—and isn’t—antisemitic speech. There are thus Jewish faculty at Columbia writing against the weaponization of antisemitism and Jewish faculty asking that the university send in the National Guard to shut down the protests. (For that matter, faculty disagree even over whether it was appropriate to call for classes to go remote.) This division is reflected not only among faculty, but also among students. There are Jewish students who feel isolated and unsafe because of the protests; Jewish students who support the goals of the protest but worry about antisemitic rhetoric and want to see it more sharply denounced; and Jewish students who are taking part in the protest and indeed held their Passover Seder on the campus lawn. This is to say nothing of the Jewish students covering the protests for campus publication or Jewish students who don’t engage much at all with the issue of Israel. 

[...]

Protests Fulfill, Rather Than Challenge, the Purpose of Universities

It is important to remember that the population under discussion here—students—is ostensibly on campus in the first place to learn and think and challenge themselves and, most importantly, each other. It matters that they are able to do so safely; but it also matters that they are able to do so at all. In that multifaceted educational environment, in which they’re learning and thinking and challenging themselves, they might decide to engage with what is happening in the world around them. They might, for example, go from a history class to reading about the looming famine in Gaza, or from an art history seminar to learning of the physical destruction of Palestinian culture sites, or from a lecture on political science to a report that over 30,000 people have died in Gaza over the course of this war, or from a literature class to seeing that an Israeli strike killed the daughter of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was himself killed by an Israeli airstrike back in December. And perhaps this causes its own kind of discomfort and sense of pain. (On the other hand, some students might leave a history or political science or language class and decide after listening to the protesters that they do not support calls to end study abroad programs with Israeli academic institutions because they decide that that would be counterproductive to getting a full understanding about the conflict or the region.)

I have had some people tell me that they do not think the protests are helping the people in Gaza, and in a sense this is true. The student protesters are not in the White House. They are not in the halls of Congress. They are not setting policy. But those on the lawns of Columbia and other campuses seem to me, more than anything else, to be trying to do what they can with the limited power they have: show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and push their own university to divest. The protests, then, are also an expression of student pain. And that pain, too, needs to be able to be expressed, not only for the sake of our foreign policy debates, and not only for the sake of academic freedom at Columbia and elsewhere, but also for our democracy.

Emily Tamkin wrote in The UnPopulist that shutting down anti-Gaza Genocide (aka Pro-Palestinian) protests are counter-productive to a college's mission to learn.

Also, Tamkin noted that Jewish students and faculty are split over the issue of college campus protests, with some favoring them and some condemning them as "antisemitic."

[jcmarchi]

MLK Celebration Gala pays tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and his writings on “the goal of true education”

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mlk-celebration-gala-pays-tribute-to-martin-luther-king-jr-and-his-writings-on-the-goal-of-true-education/

MLK Celebration Gala pays tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and his writings on “the goal of true education”

After a week of festivities around campus, members of the MIT community gathered Saturday evening in the Boston Marriott Kendall Square ballroom to celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Marking 50 years of this annual celebration at MIT, the gala event’s program was loosely organized around a line in King’s essay, “The Purpose of Education,” which he penned as an undergraduate at Morehouse College:

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough,” King wrote. “Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”

Senior Myles Noel was the master of ceremonies for the evening and welcomed one and all. Minister DiOnetta Jones Crayton, former director of the Office of Minority Education and associate dean of minority education, delivered the invocation, exhorting the audience to embrace “the fiery urgency of now.” Next, MIT President Sally Kornbluth shared her remarks.

She acknowledged that at many institutions, diversity and inclusion efforts are eroding. Kornbluth reiterated her commitment to these efforts, saying, “I want to be clear about how important I believe it is to keep such efforts strong — and to make them the best they can be. The truth is, by any measure, MIT has never been more diverse, and it has never been more excellent. And we intend to keep it that way.”

Kornbluth also recognized the late Paul Parravano, co-director of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations, who was a staff member at MIT for 33 years as well as the longest-serving member on the MLK Celebration Committee. Parravano’s “long and distinguished devotion to the values and goals of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspires us all,” Kornbluth said, presenting his family with the 50th Anniversary Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Next, students and staff shared personal reflections. Zina Queen, office manager in the Department of Political Science, noted that her family has been a part of the MIT community for generations. Her grandmother, Rita, her mother, Wanda, and her daughter have all worked or are currently working at the Institute. Queen pointed out that her family epitomizes another of King’s oft-repeated quotes, “Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth.”

Senior Tamea Cobb noted that MIT graduates have a particular power in the world that they must use strategically and with intention. “Education and service go hand and hand,” she said, adding that she intends “every one of my technical abilities will be used to pursue a career that is fulfilling, expansive, impactful, and good.”

Graduate student Austin K. Cole ’24 addressed the Israel-Hamas conflict and the MIT administration. As he spoke, some attendees left their seats to stand with Cole at the podium. Cole closed his remarks with a plea to resist state and structural violence, and instead focus on relationship and mutuality.

After dinner, incoming vice president for equity and inclusion Karl Reid ’84, SM ’85 honored Adjunct Professor Emeritus Clarence Williams for his distinguished service to the Institute. Williams was an assistant to three MIT presidents, served as director of the Office of Minority Education, taught in the Department of Urban Planning, initiated the MIT Black History Project, and mentored hundreds of students. Reid was one of those students, and he shared a few of his mentor’s oft repeated phrases:

“Do the work and let the talking take care of itself.”

“Bad ideas kill themselves; great ideas flourish.”

In closing, Reid exhorted the audience to create more leaders who, like Williams, embody excellence and mutual respect for others.

The keynote address was given by civil rights activist Janet Moses, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s; a physician who worked for a time as a pediatrician at MIT Health; a longtime resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a co-founder, with her husband, Robert Moses, of the Algebra Project, a pioneering program grounded in the belief “that in the 21st century every child has a civil right to secure math literacy — the ability to read, write, and reason with the symbol systems of mathematics.”

A striking image of a huge new building planned for New York City appeared on the screen behind Moses during her address. It was a rendering of a new jail being built at an estimated cost of $3 billion. Against this background, she described the trajectory of the “carceral state,” which began in 1771 with the Mansfield Judgement in England. At the time, “not even South Africa had a set of race laws as detailed as those in the U.S.,” Moses observed.

Today, the carceral state uses all levels of government to maintain a racial caste system that is deeply entrenched, Moses argued, drawing a connection between the purported need for a new prison complex and a statistic that Black people in New York state are three times more likely than whites to be convicted for a crime.

She referenced a McKinsey study that it will take Black people over three centuries to achieve a quality of life on parity with whites. Despite the enormity of this challenge, Moses encouraged the audience to “rock the boat and churn the waters of the status quo.” She also pointed out that “there is joy in the struggle.”

Symbols of joy were also on display at the Gala in the forms of original visual art and poetry, and a quilt whose squares were contributed by MIT staff, students, and alumni, hailing from across the Institute.

Quilts are a physical manifestation of the legacy of the enslaved in America and their descendants — the ability to take scraps and leftovers to create something both practical and beautiful. The 50th anniversary quilt also incorporated a line from King’s highly influential “I Have a Dream Speech”:

“One day, all God’s children will have the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

[adventuresinclientservice]

Instead of being good in the moment, failing at it.

After happily arriving at a title for the International Advertising Association’s Annual Conference – “Why Client Service is an Art” – I soon realized I needed a story to open my remarks, something that would illustrate, demonstrate, and validate the title.

I was stymied for a bit, but then recalled a post I wrote, “Great client service people are ‘good in the moment;’ what the hell does that mean?” and had my answer. 

The piece recounts how my Foote, Cone & Belding Account Management colleague, Jane Gardner, was able to convince a client CEO, on the verge of thwarting a major brand campaign we presented, to instead do the exact opposite and greenlight it.

It was an amazing turn of events, now largely forgotten by nearly everyone in the room that day with Jane, by everyone at the rest of the agency, and by everyone in the rest of the business.  Pretty much everyone except me.

I thought of this again as I revisited post-October 7 events occurring on university campuses around the country, as Jewish students felt the sting of threatening backlash emanating in the aftermath of the terrorist group Hamas’ ruthless slaughter – there are no other words to describe it – of 1,200 Israeli citizens.

With temperatures rising in college campuses around the country, the Presidents of three of the country’s most prestigious and prominent universities, Penn, Harvard, and MIT, were called to testify before Congress.  In the midst of the hearing, there came a moment when Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked President Elizabth Magill of Penn,

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?”

Stefanik then turned to Harvard’s President Claudine Gay, to ask if

“calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard's Code of Conduct?”  

Stefanik also put much the same question to Sally Kornbluth of MIT.

The answer was obvious, but the responses were uniformly tentative, waffling, indecisive, unclear, and compromised:

From Magill:  “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes,” From Gay:   “It depends on the context,” From Kornbluth:  “It would have to be targeted at individuals and pervasive, as well as require an investigation.”

It’s a simple question:  is the answer yes, or no?  There are times when nuance is called for; this clearly was not that time. 

No need to take even a second to respond.  No need to consult with attorneys.  No need to check with anyone on campus, not professors, not administrators, and not students.  The answer is simple, unequivocal, unimpeachable.

I’m reading these answers, thinking, “What is wrong with you people??  Have you lost your minds??”

Here was a moment when clarity, concision, and conviction were at stake, and all three Presidents, instead of being equal to that moment, failed at it.

Magill and Gay are no longer Presidents of the Universities they led.  Kornbluth, who is, if you can believe it, Jewish, might survive, but should not.

My politics are the polar-opposite of Elise Stefanik’s – she stands for everything I’m opposed to -- but when a moment like this presents itself, it defies politics or party; more than anything else, it serves as a fundamental test of character:  do you have the courage to stand up and proclaim what’s right, or not?

Th other day, in an entirely different venue, I heard Presidential candidate Nikki Haley respond to a question, “What was the cause of the Civil War?” in an equally baffling, outrageously infuriating way.

What is wrong with all these people??? 

When I witnessed Jane Gardner’s response to our CEO client, there was absolutely no one she could turn to for advice or guidance.  A bunch of us were in that room, but Jane didn’t need rescuing.  She needed to be good in the moment; she was, and then some.

The stakes were admittedly exponentially higher for those tone-deaf University Presidents and that laughably ridiculous Presidential candidate, but their answers were no less clear.  They had their moment to be good.

To a person, they weren’t.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Heather Mac Donald

Published: Dec 11, 2023

Liz Magill was forced to resign Saturday as president of the University of Pennsylvania—by all indications because, at a congressional hearing, she could not bring herself to declare that calls for the genocide of Jews are punishable speech. She would more justly have lost her job for being a bald-faced hypocrite when it comes to campus free expression. The future of higher education depends on which of these motives governs such decisions in the future.

Magill was part of a triumvirate of college presidents who testified before a House committee last week. Magill, Harvard president Claudine Gay, and MIT president Sally Kornbluth had been called to discuss the anti-Israel hatred embroiling their universities since the October 7 terror attacks on Israel. To call their performance robotic would insult robots. When asked a repeated question after their first evasion did not satisfy the questioner, these intellectual role models repeated their first evasion verbatim, maybe adding a cryptic non sequitur.

Congressman Jim Banks (R., Indiana) grilled Magill, for example, about a conference on Palestinian culture that the University of Pennsylvania had hosted two weeks before the Hamas terror attacks. Critics had demanded that Penn cancel the conference, due to the presence of alleged anti-Semites among its speakers. Penn allowed the gathering to continue, however, citing academic freedom.

Banks focused on invitee Roger Waters, founder of the rock group Pink Floyd and a vocal proponent of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement: “Why in the world would you host someone like that on your college campus to speak?” he asked.

Magill: “I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this. Antisemitism has no place at Penn.”

Banks: “Why did you invite Roger Waters? What did you think you would get out of him?”

Magill: “Antisemitism has no place at Penn, and our free speech policies are guided by the United States Constitution.”

It was on the question of condoning the “genocide of Jews” that the presidents were not only robotic but breathtakingly duplicitous.

Congressman Elise Stefanik (R., New York) parlayed this line of interrogation into national fame. Stefanik to Harvard president Claudine Gay: “Can you not say here that [calling for the genocide of Jews] is against the code of conduct at Harvard?”

Gay: “We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful. It’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying, harassment.”

Stefanik: “Is that speech according to the code of conduct or not?”

Gay: “We embrace a commitment to free expression and give a wide berth to free expression, even of views that are objectionable.”

The other two presidents took the same substantive position: whether speech constitutes actionable conduct depends on the context, including whether it is targeted at specific individuals.

Stefanik to Magill: “I am asking, specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment,”

Magill: “If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment.”

Stefanik: “So, the answer is yes.”

Magill: “It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.”

Stefanik’s questioning was relentless, but was it fair? As MIT president Kornbluth noted plaintively, she was unaware of anyone at MIT calling for the genocide of Jews. Stefanik was extrapolating from the ubiquitous student chants of “intifada” to explicit calls for Jewish genocide, but the former expression is more ambiguous, especially in the mouths of ignorant American students.

Nevertheless, Stefanik’s interrogations went viral. “American college presidents tongue tied regarding the genocide of Jews!” was the common takeaway, even among liberal defenders of academia, such as Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.

And this failure to agree that alleged calls for the genocide of Jews should be banned appears to be what did in Magill. (Penn’s chairman of the board also resigned on Sunday, a shake-up as momentous for the future of university governance as Magill’s departure.) Sensing her imminent peril, Magill released a video a day after the hearing reversing her position on punishable speech. A “call for genocide of Jewish people [is] harassment or intimidation,” she stated—and thus, subject to prior restraint or retroactive sanction.

The problem, Magill explained, was the Constitution: “For decades, under multiple Penn presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn’s policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law. In today’s world, . . . these policies need to be clarified and evaluated.” Penn would be initiating a “serious and careful look” at those constitutionally inspired limits, in order to provide what Magill called a “safe, secure, and supportive environment [where] all members of our community can thrive.”

In other words, though Penn had heretofore chosen to abide by constitutional norms (though as a private institution, it was not mandated to do so), it would now put those norms aside to ensure that students feel “safe.”

The presidents’ refusal to declare hypothetical calls for the genocide of Jews punishable conduct has been portrayed as the greatest scandal of the hearing. It was not.

The real scandal was the presidents’ duplicity in citing a “commitment to free expression” as the reason why they needed to give “wide berth to . . . views that are objectionable,” as Gay put it.

GOP congressmen demolished the presidents’ protestations of free speech loyalty, providing example after example of faculty members and outside speakers who had been muzzled, punished, or banned because of views contrary to campus orthodoxy. Those views included the assertion that sex is biological and binary, that racial preferences harm their beneficiaries, that the diversity bureaucracy inhibits academic freedom, and that an open-borders immigration policy damages the country.

It was those fantastically counterfactual assertions of loyalty to academic freedom that should have doomed Magill and the other two presidents. On any common understanding of truthfulness, their claims to protect “objectionable” views were flagrantly contrary to the facts. Having been exposed as hypocrites, dissemblers, and enforcers of politically correct thinking, they should all be fired as unfit to lead institutions ostensibly dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the transmission of knowledge.

Ironically, however, it was their one correct stance during the entire hearing debacle that put them in peril. However woodenly they asserted their alleged reason for not shutting down the pro-Hamas demonstrations, that reason should have been controlling. Speech should be protected unless it crosses the line into direct threats to individuals or incitement to imminent violence. Student parroting of Islamist slogans does not meet those tests. Allowing a central authority to ban speech that it declares injurious to the common good is a license for precisely the abuse of power that has been the norm throughout human history, a norm that the Founders were so insistent on overturning. Moreover, it has been in the name of creating what Magill called a “safe, secure, and supportive” campus “climate” that universities have suppressed unwelcome facts and unpopular speakers.

Of course, even the presidents’ explanation for why they tolerate the pro-Hamas demonstrations is likely a lie. The real reason for their equivocation is fear of the campus Left—or, in the case of the diversity bureaucrats who often took the lead in responding to the terror attacks—agreement with the campus Left that anti-Israel terrorism is merely a matter of Palestinian self-defense.

Critics of the American university have seized on what they perceive as the most efficacious means for discrediting academia. But though accusations of tolerance for the genocide of Jews guarantees the most media coverage, conservatives are making a mistake in highlighting that alleged tolerance as the main reason to revamp the university. This mistake will come back to haunt them.

Absent a complete turnover of university personnel, a renewed authority to limit speech will be used overwhelmingly against conservatives. Even now, Penn is weighing sanctions against law professor Amy Wax for her challenges to campus orthodoxy. Had the public consensus been that the universities’ mistake was in not extending the same tolerance they showed to the pro-Hamas demonstrators to dissenters from leftist nostrums, Wax could have argued that she is entitled to the same protections for controversial speech. Now, with renewed support, even from the right, for student “safety,” Penn can argue that its newfound concern for Jewish student safety requires it to intensify its solicitude for the “marginalized” groups whom Wax allegedly jeopardized with her contrarian opinions.

A colleague of Wax’s has published an op-ed in the Washington Post unironically headlined: “To fight antisemitism on campuses, we must restrict speech.” “Isn’t it time for university presidents to rethink the role that open expression and academic freedom play in the educational mission of their institutions?” asks law professor Claire Finkelstein. However fanciful the question’s premise—that universities currently honor academic freedom—it is chilling that the answer is increasingly affirmative, even from many on the right.